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President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines is a despicable human rights violator whose anti-drug campaign has resulted in the death of thousands of alleged drug dealers and addicts who are killed without being arrested and tried. While human rights organizations have condemned Duterte, the Philippine’s ruler has a fan in the White House. As the New York Times reports today, in late April President Trump called his counterpart in Manila to congratulate him for the excellent job he does in solving his country’s drug problem.

According to the transcript of the exchange Trump told his idol, “I just wanted to congratulate you because I am hearing of the unbelievable job on the drug problem. Many countries have the problem, we have a problem, but what a great job you are doing and I just wanted to call and tell you that.”

I wished I could say that I was shocked when reading this latest revelation. I was not. After all, Trump has made no secret of his admiration for the most autocratic rulers of our time—most of all, of course, Vladimir Putin. During last year’s campaign, Trump expressed his admiration for the Russian strongman repeatedly.

On one occasion, Trump stated, “I've already said he is very much of a leader. The man has very strong control over his country. You can say, 'Oh, isn’t that a terrible thing,' I mean, the man has very strong control over his country. Now it's a very different system, and I don't happen to like the system, but certainly in that system he's been a leader, far more than our president has been a leader."

Once in the White House, Trump did not shake German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s hand after their meeting. But he surely showed his high regard when welcoming Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah Sisi. As Joshua Hammer wrote in the New York Review of Books, “Human rights groups in Egypt estimate that between 40,000 and 60,000 political prisoners, including both Muslim Brotherhood members and secular pro-democracy activists, now languish in the country’s jails. Twenty prisons have been built since Sisi took power.”

But human rights violations do not bother Mr. Trump. “We agree on so many things,” the President told Sisi when they met in the White House. Sisi, Trump told him, has done “a fantastic job in a very difficult situation. We are very much behind Egypt and the people of Egypt…You have a great friend and ally in the United States and in me!”

Imagine for a moment that Hillary Clinton had agreed to an interview on Russia’s state-owned RT television during last year’s presidential campaign and praised Vladimir Putin frequently as exemplary leader.

Imagine furthermore that as president-elect she had chosen as Secretary of State a man who received the Russian “Order of Friendship” award from Putin and that she appointed as National Security Advisor a conspiracy theorist who dined with the Russian president and appeared frequently on his RT propaganda arm.

Surely, Donald Trump and his supporters would have condemned Mrs. Clinton beyond their constant attacks on “crooked Hillary” as a clear and present danger in the highest office in the land and world.

But although Mr. Trump did all of the above—from his high praise for Putin to his appearance on RT and his selection of Secretary of State and National Security Advisor--, Republican leaders,his rank-and-file supporters, and his FOX News propagandists seem to find nothing wrong with his affinity for Mr. Putin and a host of other authoritarian rulers.

During the campaign Trump warned again and again of a “rigged election” and left no doubt that the Democrats were out to cheat.

Ironically, there is ample evidence of efforts to rig the election in favor of Trump by Russian hackers on behalf of Vladimir Putin and with the assistance of Julian Assange, the shady WikiLeaks operator, who released hacked material drip-by-drip during the general campaign.

While the Kremlin celebrated, the next president of the United States condemned our country’s intelligence community for its audacity to trace the hacking to the Russian adversary praising Assange and Putin instead.

And The Donald gets away with it!

As a Trump voter in Louisiana told a reporter in response to a question about Russian involvement in the election, “If that’s what it took, I’m glad they did it.”

Yes, John McCain (R-Ariz.), the chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, presided last week over a revealing hearing on the hacking incidents (note that neither the mainstream media nor Democrats call it what it is—a scandal!).

But even Republican hawks walk on egg shells in order not to link Russian espionage to the outcome of the election in fear of Trump’s wrath.

His lashing out at the intelligence community was in defense of the legitimacy of his victory on November 8th and thus the legitimacy of his presidency.

In this new age of “post-truth” Mr. Trump has convinced his followers that he won the election in a landslide (he did not), that he actually won the popular vote (although Mrs. Clinton got nation-wide close to three million votes more than he), and that his presidency is legitimate--never mind Russian hacking.

History, however, will record the troublesome outside meddling just as it documented the dubious Supreme Court decision that handed George W. Bush the presidency 16 years ago.

Unlike some of my colleagues at Columbia University and other places of higher education I did not cancel my seminar on media in American politics yesterday, the day after Election Day. Instead, although tired from a long night without or with little sleep, my students and I discussed the outcome of the presidential race which for many was not merely a shocking surprise and nightmare but greatly upsetting as well.

We talked about the fears in immigrant communities, the anxieties among women, the apprehension s in LGBT circles, the distress of veterans still in reserve units and suddenly perceiving a growing threat to be once again activated, and the tears of millions faced with the loss of health insurance.

Some students felt that they, their families, or communities were directly threatened and disadvantaged in the coming Trump presidency based on the president-elect’s dark and divisive and vengeful demagoguery during debates and stump speeches. It was of little comfort that Republicans will have the majority on both congressional chambers and might not merely fill Anthony Scalia’s empty seat in the next four years.

But we also talked about the values and rules of the game in democracies, especially the American model, that stipulate a peaceful transfer of power however deplorable and dangerous the incoming leader and his circle might be considered by those on the losing and soon out of power side. We agreed on this.

We talked about the ability and responsibility of citizens and voters in democracies to participate in the political process—not merely in terms of voting—and that this is particularly important for young people. Such an engagement is the only chance to have an impact on the selection of future candidates, politics and policies.

We discussed the need for citizens to be informed about the whole spectrum of political views—not merely those one agrees with—and how difficult this is based on the proliferation of traditional and new online media. Given the uncivil debates of this year’s presidential race, we recognized the need for civility and mutual respect in discussions that include opinions of “the other side.”

To be sure, there were concerns about an incoming president with a core of supporters of the Ku Klux Klan, White Supremacy organizations and nativist online sites, and Neo-Nazis—all the more because Trump’s campaign included top people sharing these views. What if they move with the new president to Washington, into the White House?

But we also recognized that Mr. Trump won rust belt states not because he received the votes of bigoted people. Instead, in states like Ohio or Pennsylvania he got the votes of many rural or small town voters who were—and are fed up with Republican and Democratic Party politics and decision making. Many voted for Barack Obama in the two previous elections. They live in areas devastated by the loss of manufacturing jobs that once allowed them a comfortable middle class life but were never replaced by other good job opportunities.

Trump did not win as a Republican candidate; he won because he attacked both party elites and sold himself as an agent of change. He won because he acknowledged the predicament of the predominantly white rust belters and similarly situated people elsewhere, and he promised them a better future.

I have no idea how NBC news honchos selected those audience members who questioned Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump in their separate appearances before veterans on Wednesday night. But at the end of the town hall-style event it was clear that the chosen ones had hurled far tougher questions and accusatory statements at Mrs. Clinton than at Mr. Trump.

Moderator Matt Lauer, too, pressed Hillary Clinton hard--especially on the so-called email-issues and what they might tell us about her judgement and competence; he interrupted her repeatedly instead of allowing her to address important policy issues.

Lauer was not at all as tough in questioning Donald Trump who was not once interrupted by the moderator. Even when the GOP candidate repeated his bold-faced lies about his alleged opposition to the Iraq invasion and the military action again Libya’s ruler Muammar Gaddafi, Lauer did not interrupt and contradict Trump.

Thus, neither certain audience members nor Lauer had problems talking tough to Mrs. Clinton and being softer on Mr. Trump.

It seems that they might have feared Trump’s wrath while expecting no such reaction from Clinton.

After all, male politicians can act tough and bully challengers and get away with it without consequences, whereas the same actions by female politicians will result in accusations that they are shrill and emotional and unfit for public office.

Mrs. Clinton and other women in politics know the rules of this game.

What unfolded at the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum showed once again that in the 21st century many Americans continue to have gender biases that are deeply seated in our culture and their reflection in news and entertainment media.

It was particularly telling that on the problem of sexual assaults on female members of the military Trump stood by his 2013 tweet that made the integration of women into the military responsible for these assaults. Ah, blame the victims. Yet, Lauer who had no calms to go after Clinton let this go unchallenged as well-- in spite of Trump’s pitiful record of degrading women.

This man who wants to be president and commander-in-chief once told a reporter of New York magazine that as far as women are concerned, “You have to treat’em like shit.” The chairman of his campaign, Stephen Bannon, was accused by his now ex-wife of beating her, and his close advisor Roger Aisles was fired as Fox News boss because he was accused of sexual harassment by a number of female anchors and reporters.

When it comes to questioning male and female candidates for the highest office in the land, there should not be a double standard in questioning qualifications, character, and values. But this double standard was obvious the other night on board the Intrepid.

This weekend, as I was leaving Dublin, the Irish Times’s only front page story was an excellent commentary by Fintan O’Toole titled “Brexit fantasy is about to come crashing down.” Here are the opening paragraphs of O’Toole’s dissection of the equally surprising as shocking referendum result and its likely consequences:

“Did you ever see a slightly drunk man trying that trick with the tablecloth? He thinks he can whip the cloth off the table with a fast, clean snap, but leave all the crockery perfectly intact. He gives a sharp tug and stands back with a triumphant flourish as the plates and glasses come flying to the ground and shatter all around him.

That’s what Brexit is like. Those who have driven it have successfully pulled the cloth off the table – the underlying fabric of modern Britain has been whipped away with a shocking suddenness.

They stand in triumph, sure that they have pulled off the trick of removing a whole layer of political reality without disturbing all the family tableware. They have yet to notice that so much that was on the table is now at their feet, broken, perhaps irreparably.”

In the Brexit case the imaginary trick that O’Toole describes was not performed by drunkards but by opportunistic populists whose major appeals were not based on fact and truth. The public perceptions they strove for were that an EU exit would mean quick fixes for all the ills in the U.K.--most importantly, a stop of the transfer of huge sums of U.K. taxpayers’ money to Brussels and of the flow of foreigners onto the British isle.

One English woman interviewed by a TV reporter lauded the vote as a return to “normalcy” and to “things like they used to be.”

Ah, well. It took merely hours or days for some leaders of the Exit movement to admit explicitly or implicitly that nothing would change in the near future or perhaps not at all.

As Steven Castle reports in today’s New York Times, the most prominent Brexit populists Boris Johnson, the former London mayor, and Nigel Farage, leader of the far right Independence Party, along with others began to backpedal on their campaign promises that were all along based on misinformation.

The Brexit advocates expected to lose the referendum and win political capital among the divided conservative camp. As their underhanded tricks become increasingly exposed, they are in a pickle. As Castle put it, “Having now ousted Prime Minister David Cameron, they [the Exit leaders] face a political vacuum, with their base demanding that promises be kept. Mr. Johnson, the front-runner to replace Mr. Cameron, has not made any further pronouncements since a subdued statement on Friday that was restricted to generalities. If he does become prime minister, Mr. Johnson will face the task of carrying out a British withdrawal without provoking a backlash from those who believed campaign slogans or sentiments that he certainly appeared to endorse.”

In praising the Brexit decision and comparing its core demands to the fuzzy agenda behind his “Taking Back America” slogan Donald Trump will continue to copy the metaphorical table cloth trick of his British soulmates—regardless of the consequences.

Don’t underestimate Donald Trump. He is a natural when it comes to reading his audiences—whether in the world of business or politics. But I would be surprised if he hadn’t read some of the literature on manipulating others and the shaping of public opinion.

Day-in and day-out Trump manages his propaganda scheme as skillfully as the “father of public relations” Edward Bernays prescribed in his writings and acted upon in his public relations projects beginning in the 1920s.

Whether dealing with the promotion of consumer goods, policies, or leaders, for Bernays the “engineer of consent [or call it populist or propagandist] must create news. News is not an inanimate thing. It is the overt act that makes news, and news in turn shapes the attitudes and actions of people.”

Writing about the rise of Public Relations in the 1920s and 1930s Stuart Ewen noted, “If news had once been understood as something out there, waiting to be covered, now it was seen as product to be manufactured, something designed and transmitted to bring about a visceral public response.”

In this presidential campaign nobody else comes even close to manufacturing visceral news as successfully as Trump. After all, today social media allow everybody to self-mass communicate.

A huge part of Trump’s propaganda success is simply the mainstream media’s eagerness to report whatever he tweets out to friend and foe. If it were not for the mainstream media that he attacks constantly to the delight of his supporters, most people wouldn’t know what The Donald spreads via his twitter account.

It’s time to stop calling Donald J. Trump’s presidential operation “the Trump campaign.” It would be far more accurate to call it “Trump Productions Inc.” But as Rutenberg correctly noted, Trump is “star, show runner and chief content officer” of an operation providing “multiple running plotlines (War With Megyn Kelly; Peace With Megyn Kelly!), shocking comments (A federal judge can’t be fair to me because he’s of Mexican heritage!) and personal insults (Hillary belongs in jail; that reporter is a sleaze!) that keep Americans glued to their screens.”

It does not matter to Trump that the Democratic and Republican establishment as well as pundits condemn his outrageous statements as long as his targeted audience understands and appreciates his words and what they signal.

In spreading the message of economic and social inequality more widely than the Occupy Wall Street movement and forcing the discussion of this fundamental unfairness into the political discourse is and will remain Bernie Sanders’ merit.

But when populists are buoyed by large, enthusiastic, oftentimes fanatic crowds, their egos get into the way of reason. Drawing the “us” versus “them” card becomes the everyday rhetorical diet regardless of the broken dishes left behind.

In justifying his claim that he and not Hillary Clinton can beat Donald Trump in the November election Bernie Sanders relies on poll results. But should he and should we trust those polls?

I do not think so; and here is why: As underdog in the Democratic race Bernie Sanders has not been scrutinized by rivals on the Democratic or the Republican side or by the media. Of late Donald Trump sides openly with Bernie. Since he is assured of the GOP nomination Trump can now watch with glee how Bernie attacks Hillary in his quest to somehow wrestle the nomination away from her.

I am sure though that Capitalist Trump would love to run against Socialist Sanders knowing full well that even in a crazy election year like this one a socialist will not be elected as president.

As noted, so far nobody has laid a glove on Bernie Sanders or his closest adviser, wife Jane. That’s the underdog advantage. While reporters and pundits press Trump for the release of his tax returns and Clinton for the transcripts of her Goldman Sachs speeches, nobody seems to mind that Mr. and Mrs. Sanders have not yet produced their 2015 tax return. Nobody has tried to dig out controversies that may have occurred in the past of Bernie and Jane.

Even when events point to questionable actions and result in some news coverage, nobody seems to care. Earlier this week, for example, there were reports of the forthcoming closure of Burlington College in Vermont with references to Jane Sanders and her role in the demise of the tiny private institution. As past president, Mrs. Sanders made allegedly a controversial real estate decision that saddled the college with a heavy and eventually fatal debt burden. Years before the end of Burlington College Sanders departed reportedly with a hefty $200,000 severance package.

Were Trump and Sanders to face each other in the general campaign, the latter and his family would not merely be attacked by The Donald but also scrutinized by the media.

For Bernie, then, the polls would no longer be as tempting as they are today.

In the last phase of the presidential primary season Bernie Sanders and his most fervent supporters are tireless in their attacks against the Democratic Party, its candidate selection process, the party’s establishment, the platform, and the as of now leading presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

What was once a civil competition between Sanders and Clinton has escalated into a bitter and even violent confrontation at a Democratic convention in Nevada last weekend where Sanders supporters were reportedly “throwing chairs and later threatening the state chairwoman in a fight over delegates.”

Huge and enthusiastic crowds tend to feed the egos of populists and sharpen demagogic appeals. In the process, populists and their followers lose easily touch with reality.

Self-proclaimed revolutionaries and their movements are not interested in protecting whatever party vehicles they choose to ride to power.

Today, a perhaps irreparable schism seems more likely with respect to the Democratic Party than the Republican Party.

To be sure, Donald Trump fought the establishment of the party of his choice, the GOP candidate selection process, and his more than a dozen primary competitors relentlessly, even savagely, until he was the sole survivor and sure presidential nominee. Many inside and outside the Republican Party predicted the end of the GOP in its current form.

But now the notion of the GOP’s demise seems dead. Ever more party factions and establishment leaders fall in line behind Trump.

Unlike Trump, Sanders is neither the winner nor the frontrunner in the primary competition on his side. His chances of becoming the nominee are slimmer than slim.

Earlier I questioned here whether Sanders might help Republicans win the White House. As Clinton’s calls for partisan unity are failing, I drop the question mark concerning the consequences of Bernie’s intensified attacks on her and the Democratic Party.

*

For someone who grew up in Europe more so than for native Americans the U.S. political system is so interesting because of the differences between the basic institutional and electoral arrangements in liberal democracies there and here.

And nowhere are the differences more profound than in the characteristics of political parties and the candidate selection process as the current presidential primary season once again attests to.

In Europe, you have ideological parties with card-carrying members who support their parties’ platforms. Those who come to disagree with their party’s programmatic stance or reform ideas tend to leave and join or at least vote for another party. Because of the proportional electoral system in Europe that allots seats in legislatures according to popular votes won by each party, there are a multitude of viable parties.

This is in sharp contrast to the American winners-take-all system that favors the two major parties at the expense of minor ones.

As a result, a candidate who should be running under an alternative party banner becomes the insurgents in a major party a la Trump and Sanders.

There are problems in both the American and the European system with the latter often weakened by too many parties. But that is the stuff for a separate story.

Earlier this month, New York Times columnist Charles Blow wrote that “a nativist, sexist, arguably fascist and racist demagogue who twists the truth is the front-runner in the race to become the Republican Party’s presidential nominee, over the protestations of the party’s establishment, who rightly view his ascendance as an existential threat to an already tattered brand.”

If (when) Trump becomes the GOP’s presidential nominee or the next U. S. president, this threat does not only further the fragmentation of one of America’s major parties but threaten the American political system as we know it.

So, what is Trump—a populist, a demagogue, a fascist, or all of these?

Although Trump defies neat partisan and ideological categories, his populism and demagoguery are reminiscent of the ultra-right movements of the 1950s and 1960s, of which Richard Hofstadter wrote that for the Cold Warriors of that time their country had been “largely taken away from them and their kind.”

Similar sentiments were expressed and perpetuated by the Tea Party that emerged in early 2009, its sympathizers, and politicians close to the movement. Then the threat was personified by the “illegitimate” President Obama and his fellow liberals. But the Tea Party’s insistence of being a grassroots movement without a central leadership figure at its helm was contrary to typical populist movements that organize around charismatic leaders and personality cults. Now Trump sells himself as the best and the brightest and the strongest and the toughest leader of his “Make America Great Again” movement, the nation, and the world. Trump, the savior.

He is a textbook populist in his constant distinction between “we, the people” and “they, the elite or establishment;” and he is a demagogue in the glorification of “us” and the demonization of “them” with the “communist” Bernie Sanders his latest rhetorical punch ball. As sociologist Patricia Roberts-Miller explains, “Demagogues polarize a complicated (and often frightening) situation by presenting only two options: their policy, and some obviously stupid, impractical, or shameful one. They almost always insist that ‘those who are not with us are against us’ so that the polarized policy situation also becomes a polarized identity situation.

Populist and demagogic appeals are at the core of Trump’s simple, substance-poor messages. But what seems repetitive and simplistic is the secret of Trump’s populist appeal. As Joseph Goebbels, the propaganda genius of Hitler’s Third Reich, recognized and preached,

“In the long run, propaganda will reach the broad masses of the people only if at every stage it is uniform. Nothing confuses the people more than lack of clarity or aimlessness. The goal is not to present the common man with as many varied and contradictory theories as possible. The essence of propaganda is not in variety, but rather the forcefulness and persistence with which one selects ideas from the larger pool and hammers them into the masses using the most varied methods.”

This leaves the question whether Trump is a fascist as well. Explaining in 1944 that a satisfactory definition of fascism remained elusive, George Orwell wrote that “almost any English person would accept ‘bully’ as a synonym for ‘Fascist’. That is about as near to a definition as this much-abused word has come.”

By Brigitte L. NacosIf Bernie Sanders lived in Europe, he and his positions would place him left of center and in a mainstream political party, say, the Social Democratic Party (SPD) in Germany, which is now in a coalition government with the right of center Christian Democratic Union (CDU).

But because here in the U.S. he and his agenda are to the extreme left, the self-proclaimed democratic socialist will not become the next president—even if he were to win the Democratic Party’s nomination.

It is only in the peculiar American electoral system that a member of the legislature elected as an Independent can run for the nomination of one of the two major parties of his choice.

The Senator from Vermont, who ran as an Independent for mayor of Burlington, for the U.S. House of Representatives, and for the U.S. Senate, is now as candidate for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination inflicting great harm on the Democratic Party and its chances in this year’s presidential elections.